1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and a system for selecting and recommending content such as a piece of music in accordance with a user's request for recommending content (the term “a request for recommending content” will hereinafter be referred to as “a content recommendation request”).
2. Description of the Related Art
Since a number of new pieces of content such as music (pieces of music) are produced on a daily basis and are enjoyable in a variety of situations such as while walking, jogging, playing sports, traveling by car, and resting, various methods have been proposed for recommending content such as pieces of music to users or selecting content at the users' end.
More specifically, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-54023 discloses that each of a plurality of users carries a list of music recommendations, which he/she recommends, in his/her portable terminal unit, and the users' lists of music recommendations are exchanged among the users' portable terminal units. It also discloses that, in a portable terminal unit of one user, the other users' lists of music recommendations are collected to generate a collected list of music recommendations, and thus selection of a piece of music can be made on the basis of the number of users who have recommended each of the pieces of music.
Moreover, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-173350 discloses that, as a content recommending service provided over the Internet, a service provider recommends content such as new pieces of music appropriate for a user on the basis of a watching and listening history of the user sent to the service provider.
In addition, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-113552 discloses that a list of pieces of music at a tempo substantially the same as that of a user's walking is displayed on a display section, and the user can select a piece of music from the list to play back and the selected piece of music is played back such that the tempo of the piece of music accords with that of the user's walking.